October 09, 2003

The Decline of the Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard plumbs the depths of journalistic dishonesty where one usually only finds National Review or the Wall Street Journal editorial page:

Quick-Draw Dems: ...Novak cited "two administration officials" in his column. They may work in the White House, but they also may work in other places. There are tens of thousands of "senior administration officials."...

No. There are about 40 assistants to the president and cabinet-rank officials. They are always "senior administration officials." They have about 40 deputies--who are usually referred to as "senior administration officials." There are about 120 undersecretaries, who are often referred to as "senior administration officials." That's it: 200, not tens of thousands.

And Novak's source is not a Labor Department, a Treasury Department, an Interior Department, or a Health and Human Services Department undersecretary. The real pool is quite small.

Imagine if the Clinton Administration did the same thing during the run up to impeachment. But then it would not have mattered if it was 10,000 people, Ken Starr would have deposed them all. It is time for the Democrats to start employing the same tactics as the Republicans. Civil suit naming Bush, Rove, Libby, Rice, Rumsfeld, at a minimum, should commence.

Brad, of those 200, or so, could you give us a guestimate as to how many you think might be privy to the classified information that was dished out? It would seem to me that deputies and undersecretaries would not have a need for, nor would posess, that type of clearance.

Is it remotely possible that all of them would have the clearance needed to obtain the Plame information, or would it be a small percentage of the 200?

Its becoming apparent by their actions that they have a lot to hide. If nobody "senior" was involved, the smart move would be to fire them now. My best guess is, the parties involved are at the least, Scooter Libby, Elliot Abrams, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney... Bush Guliani in 2004?

When this first broke, one of the blogs used the language in several of the articles (Novak's, the ones reporting the 'new' scandal 2 months after the fact, etc.), took everything as true, and came up with about 14 names. I think it was Atrios's blog.